Examining How Top-rated Swedish Companies Communicate Sustainability to Customers and Stakeholders : The Power of Transparency in Sustainability Marketing Communication

Aim: This thesis is relevant in highlighting how companies communicate and market their sustainability work to customers and stakeholders, where transparency is an important part of communication. The purpose of the study is to investigate how Swedish top-rated companies communicate sustainability to customers and stakeholders effectively. Method: This qualitative study contains empirical data from eight interviews with nine respondents from seven Swedish global companies. Results and Conclusions: To communicate with customers, social media and companies own website are used as popular tools to reach out with their sustainability communication and sustainable marketing of products. The aim is to use simple messages about their sustainability efforts without losing content. To reach out to stakeholders, annual reports and sustainability reports are used to communicate their sustainability actions. All this is done with transparency in mind as the most important way to communicate. Transparency creates trust when companies can show that the communication is built on facts and data. Contribution of the Thesis: This thesis contributes to existing knowledge in a field where more research is needed. This study can inspire to further research, and inspirer other companies when it comes to sustainability and transparency because these are success factors that provide advantages both financially, socially and environmentally.